


Foxglove

by yoongleboongle



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew Minyard Has Feelings, Andrew Minyard Loves Neil Josten, Angst, Character Death, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major Illness, POV Andrew Minyard, i really hate that i wrote this tbh but my brain wanted it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 06:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoongleboongle/pseuds/yoongleboongle
Summary: Andrew Minyard was not a fucking monster, and no one would ever know it.{ Hanahaki disease fic with an alternate timeline where Andrew and Neil never get together }





	Foxglove

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just like to say if you're not in a good place maybe don't read this one, I'd been having a bad few couple of days when I wrote this and its not very uplifting, but I'm trying to write even when I don't feel great or motivated. 
> 
> Hanahaki is one of my favourite tropes so maybe I'll write a happy ending one in the future, but for anyone who loves torturing themselves have this piece of rubbish I guess.

Andrew hated it, if he was being honest. Feeling anything at all was like a foreign body in his chest that he’d really love to forcibly remove. 

Funny how absent thoughts become a reality quicker than you wish. Love was pain, love was control, love was distance. Ideally a distance of a thousand miles, but he’d take what he could get. 

He hated Neil, everything about him was the the thing of Andrew’s nightmares. On 3am sleep deprived mornings, when all he could think about was how empty he was, how fucked he was if he let this develop past a simple intrigue. And yet he had. ‘The feelingless monster’. He fucking wished.  
It would be his dying regret he guessed. Funny. 

It had started at the hospital room. Maybe before that he guessed. But he liked postponing his development of actual human emotion for as long as he could. This bit though, he guessed he couldn’t deny. Neil, to him, had been an enigma of a human being. He made no sense, but maybe that’s what made him exactly what he was. Neil was trouble, Andrew had known from the beginning. 

He’d strangled Kevin in an attempt to keep his ‘promise’, if he was still holding onto that excuse. But this was the first time he could call himself out for being a liar. He never thought he even could be. 

That shitty hospital room. 

“I’m sorry,” Neil had said. And Andrew saw red like blood smeared over his eyes, like he’d never felt anger or emotion or feeling in the entirety of his life. ‘Sorry’ was for those that had hurt them. ‘Sorry’ was for abusers. ‘Sorry’ had no place in Neil Josten’s fucking mouth. He deserved everything. When he drew his fist back, he knew he couldn’t ever do it. But it felt nice, he guessed, to think he could have, to treat Neil like he would’ve anyone else. Even if he couldn’t. Even if he knew he never would. 

That night, he vomited a sea of purple into his toilet. It was so fucking bright against the stark white toilet bowl. He felt even sicker. 

He sat for a moment, contemplating the ways in which he’d fucked up his life to end up like this, vomiting his literal unrequited love into the toilet. His entire life he’d felt like this, the sickness in his brain, the lack of emotion, all the care he’d ever put into shitty people who never deserved it. He guessed Neil maybe did deserve it. The only time he’d loved someone so , so fucking deserving of it. He ended up being punished.

He wasn’t a flower expert, that much was fucking obvious. He observed the purple for a few minutes, looking at the bell shape, the vivid colour. A quick google search solved it.  
That night, Andrew, for one of the first times in years, sat on his bathroom floor. Hysterically laughing. 

Foxgloves. 

How fucking ironic could it get. 

That night he smashed the mirror with his hands. Every small wound in his hands felt like weakness he wanted to claw apart. He felt it like a sickness. 

He felt. He felt. He felt. 

He hated it.

It progressed from there you could say. Physically at least. In his head he only blocked it out more. 

Now Neil had made a deal with the Moriyama’s, finally gained his freedom, he wore it upon his face. Casual smiles. He looked carefree. It made Andrew a bit sick. For the wrong reasons. Well, the wrong reason for someone like Andrew. 

Watching from afar was okay, he guessed. He could be glaring with hatred, watching with distrust. No one would ever have to know a thing about him and his feelings because he was a monster and he always would be now. It was the only way forward and the only thing he’d ever been. And he knew it. He knew it so well. 

Who would fall in love with a monster? 

Andrew could barely function, and he hated it. He could be the most reserved person, act emotionless. And yet some stupid fucking flowers growing in his lungs suddenly made him incapacitated by feelings he’d never even allowed himself to recognise. Petals choked up his throat. He’d never felt so out of control in his entire life, even through all the self harm, even when he’d cried ‘Stop!’ and no one had ever, ever fucking listened to him. 

It’s not that he was afraid of dying. He could be shot, hit by a bus, die in his sleep. He wasn’t afraid. He was indifferent. But this. This he couldn’t stand. Dying due to lack of control. Dying because he allowed himself to feel a single thing in an entire life of forced apathy. 

He wished he could shut it off.

He wished. He wished. He wished. 

The last time he’d seen Neil was on the roof, a night sky that was clear and starless. He remembered it so well because nothing was shining that night. It was dark. 

Andrew had lit a cigarette and laid back on the roof. It kind of hurt if he was honest. The place had seen a lot of shitty kids, and glass shards and fragmented rock littered the gravel. He wasn’t one for caring about it though. 

What he did care about, even if he hated to admit it, was the swing of the roof door. It sounded as if it was meant to be quiet, to not disturb him, but it was characteristically Josten that the loud bang of it shutting could have probably alerted a whole neighbourhood. It was a blessing that, at least, in life or death situations he was much more tactical. 

“Hello,” Neil said, falling down to sit next to him and extending his hand for a cigarette. 

That voice. He hated it. 

Andrew passed him one, along with the lighter, dropping it into his hand to avoid any contact. It was self-preservation really. 

They sat in silence for a while. It was comfortable in a way, but it left Andrew with more to think about and he’d rather shut it down before it got started.

“How does it feel? Being the rabbit who doesn’t have to run anymore?”

Neil sat in silence for a second, maybe not sure how to answer. 

“It feels…it feels wrong somehow. Kind of like I’m living a life now that’s not quite the one I was meant for?”

“Didn’t know you believed in destiny Josten.”

“I guess I don’t. But I think I had this idea that I would keep on running until my death. That would be the endpoint. And now I’m not awaiting death, its not something I have to ready myself for as an inevitable right now. And that feels strange.”

“I could just kill you right now, if it would make it easier.”

He laughed a little and took another drag from his cigarette, then he seemed to grow serious, 

“Do you think love is impossible for people like us?”

Andrew didn’t really know what to say to that one. It shouldn’t be. 

“Yes.” 

That apparently wasn’t the answer he wanted, he seemed to look in conflict for a second. 

“I don’t think so, I think maybe it would be harder, sure. I think maybe I wouldn’t know how it worked, but why would it be impossible? Surely we deserve that much?” 

“I don’t think I deserve anything. If you want to go on your little optimistic tirade be my guest.”

He seemed to not register that, or ignore it, and carried on from before:

“I think we do. If two broken people are capable, why couldn’t it ?”

“Maybe we’ve already been shown that we don’t deserve it? Ever think about that? You don’t deserve it. Neither of us do. If you want to be annoying, go back to one of those shitty, lovey dovey foxes and leave me in peace.”

He seemed kind of angry at that one. Passively, as Josten usually was. But still. Unnerved maybe. 

“Being called a monster doesn’t mean you have to mould yourself into one you know?”

Andrew thought about his words a lot that night. Dwelled on them, tossed them around in his head. Felt them travel downward, constricted his throat, squeezed his lungs. 

He threw the words up into the toilet, fluorescent purple. A fox.

He still thought about the words as he coughed, and choked, and felt petal after petal gather in his chest, in his throat. He felt as if they were smothering him. 

He was sick and tired of being alone but maybe that’s what he’d always deserved and maybe that’s how he was meant to die. Alone. 

He wasn’t a monster. He knew he wasn’t. He wasn’t a fucking monster. 

But he would die as one anyway.


End file.
